What you won’t read at the Guardian about the exploitation of the Tamimi children

While working on two articles documenting thequestionable methods and associations of the Tamimis of Nabi Saleh – who for years have been organizing almost weekly confrontations with the IDF – I came across an op-edpublished in the Guardian that cheered a viral video showing Tamimi women and children fighting off an armed Israeli soldier trying to arrest one of the Tamimi children for stone throwing. Another Guardian article on the same topic offered a somewhat more nuanced take, but aside from noting that there “is evidence that the Tamimis are acutely aware of the value of such footage in their activism,” the article also avoided any serious criticism of the participation of the Tamimi children in efforts to provoke IDF soldiers in front of the watchful cameras operated by their parents and other family members.

While I had no illusions that the Guardian would be interested in exposing the harsh views of the elder Tamimis about their children’s “duty” to “resist,” I thought the fact that I used to be a Guardian contributora few years ago might slightly improve the chance that Guardian editors would consider publishing the fairly restrained criticism of the Tamimis’ exploitation of their children I submitted. But since my submission was immediately acknowledged in an automatic reply, I haven’t heard anything for the past two weeks – which obviously means the Guardian is not interested in evidence that the Tamimis relentlessly push their children to engage in potentially lethal stone-throwing and other provocations, and that they feed the media whatever lies and fabrications seem most useful at any given moment.

Below is the post I submitted to the Guardian; however, I should note that since I wrote it, I have become increasingly convinced that when the Tamimis invoke their “right to resist,” they also mean the “right” to commit murder. This is particularly obvious in statements reported by an Israeli news site and highlighted ina recent post at the blog of Frimet and Arnold Roth, who lost a daughter in the 2001 Sbarro pizzeria massacre masterminded by Ahlam Tamimi. As the Roth’s translation of the Hebrew original shows, Bassem Tamimi’s wife Nariman – the mother of the child stars of the recent viral video – declared in no uncertain terms:

“What she [Ahlam Tamimi] did was an integral part of the struggle. Everyone fights in the manner in which he believes. There is armed uprising, and there is popular uprising. I support every form of uprising.”

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When a viral video shows dutiful children confronting armed soldiers (Op-ed rejected by the Guardian)

“We have the right to resist. Our children are doing their duty and must be strong.” That was the terse response offered by Bassem Tamimi to an obviously critical question about the regular participation of his children in weekly demonstrations that often include efforts to goad Israeli soldiers into reacting to rock-throwing and other provocations.

This time, the question came in the wake of a viral video that showed a fully armed Israeli soldier attempting to arrest Bassem Tamimi’s terrified 12-year-old son Mohammad on August 28, after one of the almost weekly demonstrations that Bassem Tamimi has been organizing for years in his West Bank village Nabi Saleh. It was not the first time that the activism of the Tamimis as a family attracted major media coverage. Two years ago, the Tamimis were prominently featured in a New York Times Magazinecover storyauthored by American writer Ben Ehrenreich, who had spent three weeks as a house guest of the Tamimi family and provided a very sympathetic account of their ambition to start a “third intifada.”

But even before, the Tamimis had been repeatedly in the spotlight, often due to the efforts of their photogenic daughter Ahed to challenge IDF soldiers. One of the most widely noted incidents was captured in another viral videothat showedthe then 12-year-old Ahed and several other children screaming furiously at Israeli soldiers. This and similar incidents have helped Ahed to achieve something like celebrity status: pro-Israel bloggers nick-named the blond girl Shirley Temper, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğaninvited herto receive an award (and an iPhone) for her “courage, ” and more recently, the Al Jazeera Media Network AJ+ posted a wildly popular short clip on their Facebook page that promotes Ahed as the “14-year-old Palestinian girl [who] is leading protests in the occupied West Bank.”

Ahed’s parents Bassem and Nariman Tamimiare clearly eager to help promoting their daughter and have proudly shared the media coverage of her in countless Facebook posts (all of which are publicly accessible at the time of this writing). But some of these posts also reveal the enormous pressure the Tamimis exert on their children to fulfill “their duty” and continue to “resist” no matter the cost. A particularly disturbing example concerns several comments by both Bassem Tamimi and his wife Nariman relating to the incident in which their 12-year-old son Mohammad – who features in the recent viral video – broke his left arm. While the Tamimis have offereddifferent explanations on this incident to the media,it is clearfrom posts they shared with the public immediately after Mohammad broke his arm on August 25 that he fell while throwing stones at an IDF jeep.

Bassem Tamimi has repeatedly made clear that he considers the throwing of stones and rocks as “a part of our [Palestinian] culture” and as integral part of an “authentic” popular struggle. He apparently also believes that no child is too young to engage in the “duty” to “resist”: in March,he uploadeda picture of three little boys struggling to block a road with large rocks, adding a comment that, translated from the original Arabic reads: “Oh, the generation of the coming victory, keep attacking, so that the homeland does not stay a hostage in trembling hands” [i.e. probably a reference to older people].

It is thus hardly surprising that Bassem Tamimi hailed his son as a “hero” after he broke his arm. Similarly, Nariman Tamimi explained in a post on her Facebook page that for her son, breaking an arm while throwing stones at an army jeep was no reason to stop. Translated to English, her post (that refers to her son Mohammad with his nickname Abu Yazan) reads:

“When you are wounded, your hand is broken, you put it in your shirt and put the edge of the shirt in your mouth and keep hitting the occupation with your pure stone – then you are my son, Abu Yazan, may Allah return you to me healthy, oh mother.”

Concerns expressed by one Facebook friend who remembered that this was already the second time Mohammad Tamimi had broken his arm werequickly rejected by Nariman Tamimi, who responded: “Either victory or martyrdom; and everything is going to be OK.”

But if “everything is going to be OK,” it will be so because the Israeli army is not quite as brutal and trigger-happy as the Tamimis usually claim. It is arguably revealing that Al Bawabapublisheda syndicated column that questioned in its headline if this was the “most cowardly Israeli soldier ever.” Equally revealing is a cartoon shared by the Tamimis after the incident: the image transforms the frightened and injured boy who was exhibited to the world as the victim of a brutal assault by an armed soldier into a little superman who needs just one arm to toss the hapless soldier into the air. A comment added by family member Bilal Tamimi reads in English: “Shatter the myth of the Zionist army at the hands of the children of Nabi Saleh.”

The Tamimis may feel that it is child’s play to “shatter the myth of the Zionist army,” but they perhaps also realize that not everyone is comfortable with this game. When Nariman Tamimi tried to justify in a recent interview why she insists on sending even their youngest child – a 9-year-old boy – to the weekly protests, she felt the need to fabricate a story, claiming there was no point trying to keep children safe at home because her son Mohammad had his arm broken sitting at home being hit by tear gas canisters that the IDF shot into the Tamimi house. Meanwhile, her husband told another reporter that Mohammad had broken his arm while fleeing an Israeli tank.

Perhaps the Tamimis should be pressed more often to explain why they send their children out to confront soldiers they regularly denounce as brutal and trigger-happy, and perhaps the stories they offer in response should be carefully checked by reporters.

“We have the right to resist. Our children are doing their duty and must be strong.” That was the terse response offered by Bassem Tamimi to an obviously critical question about the regular participation of his children in weekly demonstrations that often include efforts to goad Israeli soldiers into reacting to rock-throwing and other provocations.

Hmmm! One has to wonder about Tamimi’s (valued) advice to ‘Palestinian’ children in Damascus whose parents are opposing Assad.

It’s also important to point out that the caricature of the Israeli soldier the angry Tamimi child is shown as tossing is a gross antisemitic stereotype. Grotesquely huge hooked nose, shadowy eyes and beard kept within IDF beard guard. And it’s not enough to call this child exploitation. It is child abuse. The children’s lives are put at risk; they are subjected to intense propagandising and moral pressure to confront armed Israeli soldiers as “their duty” in support of the “right to resist”. This is in breach of the UN convention about child soldiers, since these children are clearly being used in hostilities. http://www.child-soldiers.org/international_standards.php

The internationally agreed definition for a child associated with an armed force or armed group (child soldier) is any person below 18 years of age who is, or who has been, recruited or used by an armed force or armed group in any capacity, including but not limited to children, boys and girls, used as fighters, cooks, porters, messengers, spies or for sexual purposes. It does not only refer to a child who is taking or has taken a direct part in hostilities.
(Paris Principles and Guidelines on Children Associated with Armed Forces or Armed Groups, 2007.)

The use of child soldiers in an armed conflict is a clear war crime. I wonder if the best way to put a stop to this is to charge the Taminis with that war crime in Israel or alternatively with being negligent parents who knowingly expose their children to danger. While, no doubt, PR masters the Taminis will use the court as a platform it will be hard to argue in court and in the world stage in favour of endangering one’s own children.

If the children throw rocks or firebombs, or anything lethal, they should be removed from their parents and sent to live in a kibbutz monitored by foster-parents, who have been hired on the basis of good parenting skills.

“Bassem Tamimi has repeatedly made clear that he considers the throwing of stones and rocks as “a part of our [Palestinian] culture”
Yeah, that’s their culture alright, but it’s not “Palestinian” culture as much as just Arab culture. Arab children have been taught and encouraged to throw rocks at Jews for 1400 years. It’s never been to “resist” anything, only to denigrate. The denigration of Jews is a comfort food for these dreamers. The cartoon of that little ass wipe jujitsu-ing an Israel soldier is more proof that this is indeed the case for this arrested culture.